He spent ten months lecturing on Jewish philosophy and Torah at Warsaw's Institute for Jewish Studies.

) It explores the views of the rabbis in the Mishnah, Talmud and Midrash about the nature of Torah, the revelation of God to mankind, prophecy, and the ways that Jews have used scriptural exegesis to expand and understand these core Jewish texts.

The Book of Numbers ( from Greek Ἀριθμοί, Arithmoi ;, Bəmidbar, " In the desert ") is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible, and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah.

* Behar, a portion in the annual Jewish cycle of Torah reading

The Jewish religion still retains the Torah scroll, at least for ceremonial use.

The product of this human-divine encounter is the Torah, the embodiment of God's will revealed pre-eminently to the Jewish people through Moses, the Prophets and the Sages, as well as to the righteous and wise of all nations.

Many Conservative Jews reject the traditional Jewish idea that God literally dictated the words of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai in a verbal revelation, but they hold the traditional Jewish belief that God inspired the later prophets to write the rest of the Tanakh.

In contrast to both, most Conservative positions affirm the divine but nonverbal revelation of written Torah as the authentic, historically correct Jewish view.

All contemporary Jewish movements consider the Tanakh, and the Oral Torah in the form of the Mishnah and Talmuds as sacred, although movements are divided as to claims concerning their divine revelation, and also their authority.

Christians reject the Jewish Oral Torah, which was still in oral, and therefore unwritten, form in the time of Jesus.

Christians explain that such selectivity is based on rulings made by early Jewish Christians in the Book of Acts, at the Council of Jerusalem, that, while believing gentiles did not need to fully convert to Judaism, they should follow some aspects of Torah like avoiding idolatry and fornication and blood, including, according to some interpretations, homosexuality.

Although some authorities see the Torah as commanding Jews to believe in God, Jews see belief in God as a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for a Jewish life.

In the Jewish explanation, this is a story in the Torah whereby God wanted to test Abraham's faith and willingness, and Isaac was never going to be actually sacrificed.

The Book of Deuteronomy ( from Greek Δευτερονόμιον, Deuteronomion, " second law ";, Devarim, " words ") is the fifth book of the Hebrew Bible, and of the Jewish Torah / Pentateuch.

It determines the dates for Jewish holidays and the appropriate public reading of Torah portions, yahrzeits ( dates to commemorate the death of a relative ), and daily Psalm reading, among many ceremonial uses.

However, without the insertion of embolismic months, Jewish festivals would gradually shift outside of the seasons required by the Torah.

Halakha constitutes the practical application of the 613 mitzvot (" commandments ", singular: mitzvah ) in the Torah, ( the five books of Moses, the " Written Law ") as developed through discussion and debate in the classical rabbinic literature, especially the Mishnah and the Talmud ( the " Oral law "), and as codified in the Mishneh Torah or Shulchan Aruch ( the Jewish " Code of Law ".

Broadly, the Halakha comprises the practical application of the commandments ( each one known as a mitzvah ) in the Torah, as developed in subsequent rabbinic literature ; see The Mitzvot and Jewish Law.

Besides the basic categories applied to the mitzvot in antiquity, during the medieval period Jewish law was classified by such works as Maimonides ' Mishneh Torah and Joseph Karo's Shulchan Aruch.

Reform Judaism and Reconstructionist Judaism both hold that modern views of how the Torah and rabbinic law developed imply that the body of rabbinic Jewish law is no longer normative ( seen as binding ) on Jews today.

Those in the traditionalist wing of these movements believe that the halakha represents a personal starting-point, holding that each Jew is obligated to interpret the Torah, Talmud and other Jewish works for themselves, and this interpretation will create separate commandments for each person.

According to some traditional interpretations of the Book of Exodus, Book of Numbers, and the Letter to the Hebrews the Ark also contained Aaron's rod, a jar of manna and the first Torah scroll as written by Moses ; however, the first of the Books of Kings says that at the time of king Solomon, the Ark contained only the two Tablets of the Law.

The Old Testament is called by the Jews the Tanakh, an acronym formed by combining the initials of the three sections by which the Jews divide the text: the Torah, or Law ( the Pentateuch ), the Nevi ' im, or Prophets, and the Ketuvim, or Writings or Hagiographa ( with vowels added, as Hebrew is written with a consonantal script, TaNaKh ).

In the Torah, or Old Testament, every seventh year is decreed by Mosaic Law as a Sabbatical year wherein the release of all debts that are owed by members of the community is mandated, but not of " foreigners ".

The Oral Torah is the primary guide for Jews to abide by these terms, as expressed in tractate Gittin 60b, " the Holy One, Blessed be He, did not make His covenant with Israel except by virtue of the Oral Law " to help them learn how to live a holy life, and to bring holiness, peace and love into the world and into every part of life, so that life may be elevated to a high level of kedushah, originally through study and practice of the Torah, and since the destruction of the Second Temple, through prayer as expressed in tractate Sotah 49a " Since the destruction of the Temple, every day is more cursed than the preceding one ; and the existence of the world is assured only by the kedusha ... and the words spoken after the study of Torah.

The Hebrew Bible is composed of three parts ; the Torah ( Instruction, the Septuagint translated the Hebrew to nomos or Law ), the Nevi ' im ( Prophets ) and the Ketuvim ( Writings ).

Once this task was completed Nehemiah had Ezra read the Law of Moses ( the Torah ) to the assembled Jews, and the people and priests entered into a covenant to keep the law and separate themselves from all other peoples.

Their answer was to insist on strict observance of the Law ( the Torah ), isolation from the gentiles, and minimalisation of the expectation of the coming of the Messiah ( the expectation which had provoked the war ).

A second classical distinction is between the Written Torah ( laws written in the Hebrew Bible, specifically its first five books ), and Oral Law, laws believed transmitted orally prior to compilation in texts such as the Mishnah, Talmud, and Rabbinic codes.

Although Orthodox Judaism acknowledges that rabbis made many decisions and decrees regarding Jewish Law where the written Torah itself is non-specific, they did so only in accordance with regulations given to them by Moses on Mount Sinai ( see Deuteronomy 5: 8-13 ).

It is characterised by the belief that the Written Torah ( Law ) cannot be correctly interpreted without reference to the Oral Torah and by the voluminous literature specifying what behavior is sanctioned by the law ( called halakha, " the way ").

According to Jewish tradition, God gave both the Written Law ( Torah ) and the Oral Law ( additional laws and customs meant to be passed down from teacher to student ) to Moses on Mount Sinai.

According to the historic view of the Jewish faith, allegorically the Oral Law ( Torah she-be ' al-peh ) was also given to Moses at Sinai, and is the exposition of the Written Law as relayed by the scholarly and other religious leaders of each generation.

Notably, the Mishnah does not cite a written scriptural basis for its laws: since it is said that the Oral Law was given simultaneously with the Written Law, the Oral Law codified in the Mishnah does not derive directly from the Written Law of the Torah.

The great Torah scholar, commentator and kabbalist, Nachmanides ( Ramban 1195-1270 ), attributed Job's suffering to reincarnation, as hinted in Job's saying " God does all these things twice or three times with a man, to bring back his soul from the pit to ... the light of the living ' ( Job 33: 29, 30 ).

Moses received the Torah ( Tawrat ), David received the Psalms ( Zabur ), Jesus inspired the Gospels ( Injil ), and Muhammed received the Qur ' an.

* Ark ( synagogue ), a cabinet used to store a synagogue's Torah scroll

The midrashic book of Jasher argues that prior to revealing his identity, Joseph asked Benjamin to find his missing brother ( i. e. Joseph ) via astrology, using an astrolabe-like tool ; it continues by stating that Benjamin divined that the man on the throne was Joseph, so Joseph identified himself to Benjamin ( but not the other brothers ), and revealed his scheme ( as in the Torah ) to test how fraternal the other brothers were.

Judaism places emphasis on the right conduct ( or orthopraxy ), focusing on the Mosaic Covenant that the God of Israel, made with the Israelites, as recorded in the Torah and Talmud.

Whereas the written Torah has a fixed form, the Oral Torah is a living tradition that includes not only specific supplements to the written Torah ( for instance, what is the proper manner of shechita and what is meant by " Frontlets " in the Shema ), but also procedures for understanding and talking about the written Torah ( thus, the Oral Torah revealed at Sinai includes debates among rabbis who lived long after Moses ).

The quintessential physical expression of Judaism is behaving in accordance with the 613 Mitzvot ( the commandments specified in the Torah ), and thus live one's life in God's ways.

Judaism's view is summed up by a biblical observation about the Torah: in the beginning God clothes the naked ( Adam ), and at the end God buries the dead ( Moses ).

In his work Mishneh Torah ( 1178 ), Maimonides included a chapter " Sanctification of the New Moon ", in which he discusses the calendrical rules and their scriptural basis.

According to the Talmud ( Tractate Makot ), there are 613 mitzvot (" commandments ") in the Torah ; in Hebrew these are known as the Taryag mitzvot תרי " ג מצוות.

Orthodox Judaism holds that Halakha is the divine law as laid out in the Torah ( First five books of Moses ), rabbinical laws, rabbinical decrees and customs combined.

Orthodox Jews maintain Halakha is derived from the divine law of the Torah ( Bible ), rabbinical laws, rabbinical decrees and customs combined.